to believe that I had only to speak to have you for my own. Are you
simply foolish, or are you wicked? Did you care for me at all, or was it
only your wish to increase the number of men in your train? This one"
(here his hand pointed quiveringly towards the house) "has enjoyed a
happiness denied me. His hand has touched yours, his lips--" Here his
words became almost unintelligible till his purpose gave him strength,
and he cried: "But notwithstanding this, notwithstanding any vows you
may have exchanged, I have claims upon you that I will not yield. I who
have loved no woman before you, will have such a hand in your fate that
you will never be able to separate yourself from the influence I shall
exert over you. I will not intrude between you and your lover; I will
not affect dislike or disturb your outer life with any vain display of
my hatred or my passion, but I will work upon your secret thoughts, and
create a slowly increasing dread in the inner sanctuary of your heart
till you wish you had called up the deadliest of serpents in your
pathway rather than the latent fury of Obadiah Trohm. You are a girl
now; when you are married and become a mother, you will understand me.
For the present I leave you. The shadow of this old house which has
never seen much happiness within it will soon rest upon your thoughtless
head. What that will not do, your own inherent weakness will. The woman
who trifles with a strong man's heart has a flaw in her nature which
will work out her own destruction in time. I can afford to let you enjoy
your prospective honeymoon in peace. Afterwards--" He cast a threatening
look towards the decaying structure behind me, and was silent. But that
silence did not unloose my tongue. I was absolutely speechless.
"Ten brides have crossed yonder threshold," he presently went on in a
low musing tone freighted with horrible fatality. "One--and she was the
girl whose mother was driven up to these doors dead--lived to take her
grandchildren on her knees. The rest died early, and most of them
unhappily. Oh, I have studied the traditions of your future home! _You_
will live, but of all the brides who have triumphed in the honorable
name of Knollys, you will lead the saddest life and meet the gloomiest
end notwithstanding you stand before me now, with loose locks flying in
the wind, and a heart so gay that even my despair can barely pale the
roses on your cheek."
This was the raving of a madman. I recognized it as such, and took a
little heart. How could he see into my future? How could he prophesy
evil to one over whom he will have no control? to one watched over and
beloved by a man like Charles? He is a dreamer, a fanatic. His talk
about the flaw in my nature is nonsense, and as for the fate lowering
over my head, in the shadows falling from the toppling old house in
which I am likely to take up my abode--that is only frenzy, and I would
be unworthy of happiness to heed it. As I realized this, my indignation
grew, and, uttering a few contemptuous words, I was hurrying away when
he stopped me with a final warning.
"Wait!" he said, "women like you cannot keep either their joys or their
miseries to themselves. But I advise you not to take Charles Knollys
into your confidence. If you do, a duel will follow, and if I have not
the legal acumen of your intended, I have an eye and a hand before which
he must fall, if our passions come to an issue. So beware! never while
you live betray what has passed between us at this interview, unless the
weariness of a misplaced affection should come to you, and with it the
desire to be rid of your husband."
A frightful threat which, unfortunately perhaps, has sealed my lips. Oh,
why should such monsters live!
* * * * *
I have been all through the house to-day with old Mr. Knollys. Every
room was opened for my inspection, and I was bidden to choose which
should be refurnished for my benefit. It was a gruesome trip, from which
I have returned to my own little nook of chintz as to a refuge. Great
rooms which for years have been the abode of spiders, are not much to my
liking, but I chose out two which at least have fireplaces in them, and
these are to be made as cheerful as circumstances will permit. I hope
when I again see them, it will not be by the light of a waning November
afternoon, when the few leaves still left to flutter from the trees
blow, soggy and wet, against the panes of the solitary windows, or lie
in sodden masses at the foot of the bare trunks, which cluster so
thickly on the lawn as to hide all view of the highroad. I was meant for
laughter and joy, flashing lights, and the splendors of ballrooms. Why
have I chosen, then, to give up the great world and settle down in this
grimmest of grim old houses in a none too lively village? I think it is
because I love Charles Knollys, and so, no matter how my heart sinks in
the dim shadows that haunt every spot I stray into, I will be merry,
will think of Charles instead of myself, and so live down the unhappy
prophecies uttered by the wretch who, with his venomous words, has
robbed the future of whatever charm my love was likely to cast upon it.
The fact that this man left the town to-day for a lengthy trip abroad
should raise my spirits more than it has. If we were going now, Charles
and I--But why dream of a Paradise whose doors remain closed to you? It
is here our honeymoon is destined to be passed; within these walls and
in sight of the bare boughs rattling at this moment against the panes.
I made a misstatement when I said that I had gone into all the rooms of
the house this afternoon. _I did not enter the Flower Parlor._
* * * * *
I had been married a month and had, as I thought, no further use for
this foolish diary. So one evening when Charles was away, I attempted to
burn it.
But when I had flung myself down before the blazing logs of my bedroom
fire (I was then young enough to love to crouch for hours on the rug in
my lonely room, seeking for all I delighted in and longed for in the
glowing embers), some instinct, or was it a premonition? made me
withhold from destruction a record which coming events might make worthy
of preservation. That was five years ago, and to-day I have reopened the
secret drawer in which this simple book has so long lain undisturbed,
and am once more penning lines destined perhaps to pass into oblivion
together with the others. Why? I do not know. There is no change in my
married life. I have no trouble, no anxiety, no reason for dread;
yet--Well, well, some women are made for the simple round of domestic
duties, and others are as out of place in the nursery and kitchen as
butterflies in a granary. I want just the things Charles cannot give me.
I have home, love, children, all that some women most crave, and while I
idolize my husband and know of nothing sweeter than my babies, I yet
have spells of such wretched weariness, that it would be a relief to me
to be a little less comfortable if only I might enjoy a more brilliant
existence. But Charles is not rich; sometimes I think he is poor, and
however much I may desire change, I cannot have it. Heigho! and, what is
worse, I haven't had a new dress in a year; I who so love dress, and
become it so well! Why, if it is my lot to go shabby, and tie up my
dancing ringlets with faded ribbons, was I made with the figure of a
fairy and given a temperament which, without any effort on my part,
makes me, diminutive as I am, the centre of every group I enter? If I
were plain, or shy, or even self-contained, I might be happy here, but
now--There! there! I will go kiss little William, and lay Loreen's baby
arm about my neck and see if the wicked demons will fly away. Charles is
too busy for me to intrude upon him in that horrid Flower Parlor.
* * * * *
I was never superstitious till I entered this house; but now I believe
in every sort of thing a sane woman should not. Yesterday, after a
neglect of five years, I brought out my diary. To-day I have to record
in it that there was a reason for my doing so. Obadiah Trohm has
returned home. I saw him this morning leaning over his fence in the same
place and in very much the same attitude as on that day when he
frightened me so, a month before my wedding.
But he did not frighten me to-day. He merely looked at me very sharply
and with a less offensive admiration than in the early days of our first
acquaintance. At which I made him my best courtesy. I was not going to
remind him of the past in our new relations, and he, thankful perhaps
for this, took off his hat with a smile I am trying even yet to explain
to myself. Then we began to talk. He had travelled everywhere and I had
been nowhere; he wore the dress and displayed the manners of the great
world, while I had only a hungry desire to do the same. As for fashion,
I needed all my beauty and the fading sparkle of my old animation to
enable me to hold up my head before him.
But as for liking him, I did not. I could admire his appearance, but he
himself attracted me no more than when he had words of angry fury on his
tongue. He is a gentleman, and one who has seen the world, but in other
ways he is no more to be compared with my Charles than his pert new
house, built in his absence, with the grand old structure with whose
fatality he once threatened me.
I do not think he wants to threaten me with disaster now. Time closes
such wounds as his very effectually. I wish we had some of his money.
* * * * *
I have always heard that the wives of the Knollys, whatever their
misfortune, have always loved their husbands. I do not think I am any
exception to the rule. When Charles has leisure to give me an hour from
his musty old books, the place here seems lively enough, and the
children's voices do not sound so shrill. But these hours are so
infrequent. If it were not for Mr. Trohm's journal (Did I mention that
he had lent me a journal of his travels?) I should often eat my heart
out with loneliness. I am beginning to like the man better as I follow
him from city to city of the old world. If he had ever mentioned me in
its pages, I would not read another line in it, but he seems to have
expended both his love and spite when he bade me farewell in the garden
underlying these bleak old walls.
* * * * *
I am becoming as well acquainted with Mr. Trohm's handwriting as with my
own. I read and read and read in his journal, and only stop when the
dreaded midnight hour comes with its ghostly suggestions and the
unaccountable noises which make this old dwelling so uncanny. Charles
often finds me curled up over this book, and when he does he sighs. Why?
* * * * *
I have been teaching Loreen to dance. Oh, how merry it has made me! I
think I will be happier now. We have the large upper hall to take steps
in, and when she makes a misstep we laugh, and that is a good sound to
hear in this old place. If I could only have a little money to buy her a
fresh frock and some ribbons, I would feel perfectly satisfied; but I do
believe Charles is getting poorer and poorer every day; the place costs
so much to keep up, he says, and when his father died there were debts
to be paid which leaves us, his innocent inheritors, very straitened.
Master Trohm has no such difficulties. He has money enough. But I don't
like the man for all that, polite as he is to us all. He seems to quite
adore Loreen, and as to William, he pets him till I feel almost
uncomfortable at times.
* * * * *
What shall I do? I am invited to New York, _I_, and Charles says I may
go, too--only I have nothing to wear. Oh, for some money! a little
money! it is my right to have some money; but Charles tells me he can
only spare enough to pay my expenses, that my Sunday frock looks very
well, and that, even if it did not, I am pretty enough to do without
fine clothes, and other nonsense like that,--sweet enough, but totally
without point, in fact. If I am pretty, all the more I need a little
finery to set me off, and, besides, to go to New York without
money--why, I should be perfectly miserable. Charles himself ought to
realize this, and be willing to sell his old books before he would let
me go into this whirl of temptation without a dollar to spend. As he
don't, I must devise some plan of my own for obtaining a little money,
for I won't give up my trip--the first offered me since I was
married,--and neither will I go away and come back without a gift for my
two girls, who have grown to womanhood without a jewel to adorn them or
a silk dress to make them look like gentlemen's children. But how get
money without Charles knowing it? Mr. Trohm is such a good friend, he
might lend me a little, but I don't know how to ask him without
recalling to his mind certain words long since forgotten by him perhaps,
but never to be forgotten by me, feather-brained as many people think
me. Is there any one else?
* * * * *
I wonder if some things are as wicked as people say they are. I----
* * * * *
Here the diary breaks off abruptly. But we know what followed. The
forgery, the discovery of it by her suave but secret enemy, his
unnatural revenge, and the never-dying enmity which led to the tragic
events it has been my unhappy fortune to relate at such length. Poor
Althea! with thy name I write _finis_ to these pages. May the dust lie
lightly on thy breast under the shadow of the Flower Parlor, through
which thy footsteps passed with such dread in the old days of thy
youthful beauty and innocence!
THE END
WORKS BY Anna Katharine Green
The Leavenworth Case.
A Strange Disappearance.
The Sword of Damocles.
Hand and Ring.
The Mill Mystery.
Behind Closed Doors.
Cynthia Wakeham's Money.
Marked "Personal."
Miss Hurd: An Enigma.
Dr. Izard.
That Affair Next Door.
Lost Man's Lane.
Agatha Webb.
The Old Stone House.
The Doctor, His Wife, and the Clock.
X. Y. Z. A Detective Story.
7 to 12. A Detective Story.
The Defence of the Bride.
Risifi's Daughter. A Drama.